We wrapped up all the pitcher projections and now we can move on to the hitters!
There are a lot of stat projection publications available on the internet and magazine shelves. Rather than trusting one (although if I had to pick one, it would be Baseball Prospectus), I like to average the projections together. In a perfect world, I would take data from the several years I’ve done this to figure out how to weight the projections in the average, but for now just a straight average will be fine. This tends to round out the higher/lower outliers while still allowing them to have a say in the conversation. Let’s take a look at the average projections for Neil Walker:
| Neil Walker | |||||||||
| PA | AB | R | HR | RBI | SB | AVG | OBP | SLG | |
| 2016 | 458 | 412 | 57.00 | 23 | 55 | 3 | 0.282 | 0.347 | 0.476 |
| Projections | |||||||||
| MLB.com | 489 | 66.00 | 22 | 68 | 2 | 0.27 | 0.334 | 0.466 | |
| Steamer | 459 | 60.00 | 19 | 65 | 3 | 0.261 | 0.333 | 0.44 | |
| ZiPS | 521 | 65.00 | 20 | 65 | 3 | 0.263 | 0.329 | 0.442 | |
| ESPN | 60.00 | 21 | 60 | 3 | 0.271 | ||||
| Baseball Prospectus | 518 | 59.00 | 19 | 66 | 3 | 0.255 | 0.325 | 0.426 | |
| Sporting News | 495 | 68.00 | 23 | 72 | 3 | 0.273 | 0.341 | 0.451 | |
| NBC Rotoworld | 451 | 60.00 | 18 | 66 | 2 | 0.257 | 0.331 | 0.43 | |
| Rotowire | 472 | 64.00 | 21 | 64 | 3 | 0.275 | 0.34 | 0.462 | |
| Baseball America | 527 | 64.00 | 19 | 62 | 3 | 0.269 | 0.329 | 0.425 | |
| FBG 2017 | 516 | 70.00 | 24 | 71 | 3 | 0.278 | |||
| Average | 519.5 | 487 | 63.6 | 20.6 | 65.9 | 2.8 | 0.2672 | 0.33275 | 0.44275 |
Neil Walker was on a record setting season for the Mets before injury side lined him. The Mets are taking an interesting risk with him this year. The Mets are paying him a lot for one year, but if he hits any where near where he did last year, the Mets will take it.
The projections do not see him surpassing the numbers or the pace he was on last year, but still, 20+ homers and 66 RBI’s is a lot, especially in the middle infielder.
Sources:
MLB.com and Steamer Projections can both be found here.
ZiPS projections can be found here.
ESPN projections can be found here.
Seidler, Jarrett & BP Staff. (2017) Baseball Prospectus 2017. New York, New York:Turner Publishing Company
The Fantasy Baseball Guide (2017)
Sporting News Fantasy Baseball (2017)
Baseball America Fantasy Guide (2017)
Rotowire Fantasy Baseball (2017)
Rotoworld Fansty Baseball (2017)
Notes:
Article Written on 3/14, stats collected 2/19 and may have changed after collection. Not all sources above may have been used in this article specifically but were used in judgment calls for reliability of the data
